Sarah and I finished unloading the wood into the barn.  The trailer was greatly relieved of its heavy burden.  I used the spare tire I was wise enough to purchase (thank goodness for not being a cheapskate).  While I was changing the tire I got Sarah up on the tractor.  She got the five minute demo and off she went to start moving the sheep shit pile.  I only had to give her one more set of pointers and she kept it up for a few more hours and got a nasty sunburn on her face.  The weather was stunning all weekend, great time to be outside. 

I took the trailer into Les Schwab and it turned out to be a rock popped the bead and got inside the tire.  The fixed it for $12.50, best news of the day.   Sarah has about another four days to get both sheep excrement piles consolidated.  We were looking at the front of the barn and noticed some honey bees going in and out of a large crack in the wood.  On the backside of the wall it is all enclosed so I am not sure how large the hive is currently.  This is going to cause me to do some kind of work around when tearing off the front of the barn.  The bee portion is in good shape so I may just leave it alone.  Don’t see a lot of honey bees around here. 

Lucky our Ram

On Sunday, Sarah and I went out to catalog the sheep.  We sorted all the sheep into the square pen and attempted to catch the three baby boys that needed banded and tagged.  We chased them back into the barn to catch the last two.  The first one I just flopped on and pinned to the ground.  The damn lambs jump around like jumping jacks.  The little ones can leap four feet off the ground.  Once we had those three finished, we chased them all into the square pen.  I brought Zeke into the pen and had him sit by the gate.  He did great.  Every once in a while he would sneak out of his laying position when I wasn’t looking.  Sarah came up with the great idea of chasing all the sheep into the loading chute and then sorting them out.  We needed to check off each ear tag to see which ones were missing.  It was hectic and once we got a few out into the square pen we would chase them out after checking them off our list. 

Stubborn ewe who always fights with Zeke

The sheep are incredibly stubborn.  I had one ewe refuse to leave the square pen (her baby was still in the chute, but is over three months old).  She ducked her head and scraped her hoof on the ground at me.  I sicked Zeke on her.  Have you ever seen a picture of fighting bears?  Both animals up on their hind quarters, mouths open, teeth snarling, and front legs kicking?  Totally Zeke and that ewe, he was snarling and making a heck of racket.  He weighs in at a whopping 30 pounds and the ewe weighs around 100#.  I had to call him off.  I am continually amazed at how hard headed the Barbados Blackbelly breed is when it comes to protecting their young.  We finally got it finished and had six boys left to weigh.  Two of those are over 85# so they are ready for market.  I will start hunting up customers.  One more weighed in at 81# so he will be ready soon.  There are 31 sheep total right now with 10 whethers (neutered boys), one ram and 20 ewes.  I have the spreadsheet all updated again.  There were a couple of errors on our spreadsheet, so I am hoping we catch all those and get them fixed.  You wouldn’t think it would be that hard, but a misplaced number makes a big difference.

I started spraying weeds.  This will be a never ending battle, but now that I have the trailer I will be taking the mule (four wheeler vehicle) over to get it fixed so it can become the permanent spraying vehicle.  This will be nice as dragging a little 2 gallon sprayer around is very painful.  I need to get on top of those thistles before they get huge.   I got a series of wonderful birthday presents.  Annmarie got me a predator camera for the coop that does infared 30 feet at night and transmits wireless to the home computer.  My parents got me a .17 HMR rifle.  It is very nice and boy those coyotes better look out now.  Very nice rifle.   

Wood for barn siding and part of floor, notice flat tire and mounted spare in spare holder keeping trailer off ground.

My poor brand new trailer.  Lets preface this by saying the passenger side mirror doesn’t stay in place, it moves around in the wind.  I went and picked up the trailer Tuesday night.  I forgot to mention that on the way home that night I had to swerve to miss a very large dog standing in the middle of the highway.  I couldn’t swerve too much as I was towing the trailer.  When I looked back in my side mirror the dog was still standing.  Now mind you it was facing 180 degrees opposite of when I went past in the vehicle.  I just took that as an odd coincidence.  Come on, the dog was still standing!!  When I woke up the next morning and was going to work I noticed the dent in the driver side fender of the brand new trailer.  Damn dog. 

Burned paint off and made a bubble in metal from friction.

Today, I went to go pick up lumber for the barn.  I got 4500 bf of lumber at a total weight of 7500 pounds.  The trailer is rated for 7000 pounds.  I was going to go the back roads home (all gravel and not traveled) so I thought I would be safe.  About half way home I started to have traction issues in the pickup.  Then I started to notice the squeaking noise coming from the driver side trailer.  It sounded like a wheel bearing going bad on my brand new trailer.  About 4 miles from home I started to notice the smoke coming from the driver side tire on the trailer.  1 mile from the house I noticed sparks flying from the tire well on the drivers side.   I stopped to open the gate into the barn lot and just about could not get the trailer to pull in next to the barn.  I parked and looked on the passenger side.  The rear tire on the trailer was flat.  The spare tire was hitting the ground occasionally, keeping the rear of the trailer from dragging on the road. The driver side rear tire had been rubbing on the wheel well, burned the paint right off.

Dent in front fender from dog in road.

My whole load had shifted back two feet.  Too much weight on the back half of the trailer, dire consequences.  I am hoping that I only ruined the tire, not the rim, not the brakes, nothing else.  Nothing is ever easy.  Annmarie helped me unload half the trailer today and Sarah and I will finish it tomorrow so I can have the trailer tire looked at.  I am always amazed at how wrong things continue to happen. 

Lots of things to catch up on.  Annmarie has deemed my work on the upstairs bedroom incomplete.  The barn is taking precedence and she says I never finish my winter project until late spring any ways.  That means the spare room is not getting done before summer.  I vacuumed and washed the walls and floor today, we rolled out a couple of rugs and I am going to screw in all the outlets and put covers over them so people cannot stick their finger into them.  We are going to set the spare bed back up and I will keep a gate over the entrance so the animals cannot get into the room.  This should keep the floor pretty clean so I can jump right back in this winter.  I took the small shop vac up into the attic and vacuumed up about 60 wasps/yellow jackets buzzing around the attic.  I took up one trap and need to set up another.  They are coming in at the peak of the roof.  I don’t mind them in the attic but we have killed five in the house.  It may be time to bug bomb the attic.  I want to give the traps a chance and see if they can take care of the stinging pests first.

I came home the other day and Zeke had black and white feathers all over the yard at his feet.  I thought he had killed one of my chickens!  So I took a feather and smacked him on the nose with it and told him bad dog.  Turns out he found a wing of a dead bird and drug it to the house.  I think they are turkey feathers, but I have never killed a wild turkey so I am not sure.  I was very glad that he didn’t kill a chicken.  Damn dog is all over the place.  I am giving him a bath three times a week and today I had to hose the mud off his legs twice.  He has started digging in the yard now when he is on the run.  I realize he is bored, but he cannot terrorize the sheep while we are gone.  Considering he sneaked off this evening and we caught him chasing the sheep around on the hillside.  He has the sheep so spooked they start moving when he is 50 yards away.  He will go down now even when is way out there.  Our down command is to lay and stay.  I still cannot point left or right yet and get him to go that direction to herd the sheep in the direction I want not the one he wants.

I went and picked up the new trailer tonight!  It pulled great, could hardly tell it was hooked up to the pickup.  I am all ready to start picking up supplies for the barn.  I will start on Friday with the local mill and then next week drop off the mule (four wheeler) for repairs and pick up some more wood.  Hopefully, I can get all the big errands done next week.  Somewhere in there I will have to create some racks for the trailer.  I am going to make some low two foot racks all the way around then some four foot racks that slip on top, giving me a six foot high enclosure.  I will run a few chains across the top to hold the sides in.  Still planning the design in my head.

The thistles are starting to make a strong come back.  This weekend hopefully it will not rain so we can spray them and get them stopped before they get huge.

I had another picture of the barn lot, but the stupid camera didn’t memorize it.  Sometimes, I know gremlins exist.  I went out and dug for another three hours today.  This morning at 0400 I tried to roll out of bed to pee and thought I was going to die.  Every muscle above my waist was screaming at me to lay back down, but my bladder was louder than the rest.  I made it out of bed.  After taking Zeke to the vet and running some errands I was feeling better and decided that the digging would not complete itself magically.  I decided to go to the other end of the barn and work my way back towards the middle for a change of pace.  I learned that some maintenance has been done to the barn.  The floor in the first 16 feet of the barn has been replaced at one time.  It is laid out differently than the rest of the floor and has a separate crossbeam support structure.  I realize that may seem germane but it means I have to dig two separate paths almost 20 feet under the barn to get to the newer supports!  This sucks mightily. 

Start of my twenty foot path under the barn,

Those are 16 inch beams running North to South.  The rest of the barn the supports run East to West.  On this end of the barn I have found four posts that do not even touch the ground.   Amazing since the barn has sunken almost a foot on this end.  I would have expected them to be touching the ground by now.  I did go buy another rake today.  It was much easier in places using the rake. 

No wonder this part of the barn sunk down.

They also just kind of tucked the support beam next to the outer support beam.  So there are two different beams on a single rock.  Going to make it painful to jack these all up at the same time. I fired up the tractor and spread more dirt out.  It looks like the whole lot is getting flatter and more dirt, but it could be my imagination.  Once I get all the digging done I will replant some pasture grass in the lot.  We will have to lock the sheep and horses out.  I am not sure how I am going to keep the chickens from eating all my seed while it is trying to germinate. 

Very left corner of the barn.

The front left corner of the barn didn’t even have a post under it.  You had to look under the barn a couple of feet to find the first post.  I have to dig alongside all  those rocks under the barn.

Day 2 of digging and spreading dirt to level and smooth barn lot.

I really did dig more sheep turds and dirt today.  I only have one more day to dig before I get tied up with something else so I am going gangbusters.  I cleared another two pillars today.  I also managed to get a bunch of large chunks of dried poop (comes out in huge clumps) out of all the areas.  I then went along and reached in with a shovel and dug back as far as I could standing from the outside.  I would have used the rake, but I broke that yesterday.  I have broken at least five rakes since we moved out to the farm, two different shovels and three post hole diggers.  I was real happy with how the lot is turning out.  There is so much soil under the barn that I am able to really start leveling the entire lot.  I think I will be able to get the entire lot to the same height before I am done.  No more dodging all the rocks sticking up.  I even went over and made our path to the bridge level. 

The most amazing part is with all the different tasks I have completed with the tractor I still have under 20 run hours on the engine.  I am amazed.  The rental guy told me I would probably put less than 100 hours on it per year and he is going to be right.  I will probably only have about 50 hours on it in the first year. 

You can see my shovel.  It is starting to look pretty obvious why I need to fix the supports.

Needless to say, I am going to be glad to go back to work just so I can rest.  The upstairs bedroom is not completed.  Annmarie has given me a pass on it and wants the barn done first.  Zeke goes to the vet tomorrow for the “snip, snip” (castration).  I am hoping it slows him down some.  He is all over the place.  We have been actively reinforcing the “down” command.  It means lay and stay all in one command.  We have to give him the release signal to let him up again.  He does it for a few seconds now.  I have to keep reminding myself that he is only 6 months old and has learned far more than any other dog we have ever had at this age.

The sheep are getting out of every hole I burned into the fence this winter.  Fencing is on the immediate horizon, I just need the weather to be a little better.  I have also been getting the old lambing shed emptied and ready for the tractor and all its implements.  Still some more stuff to rip out and I can then put each implement in its own home for easy access.  Our new trailer comes next week.  Things are starting to fall together all at once.